Organizing Committee
Andrew D. Hanson, Professor, Horticultural Sciences Dept., Univ. Florida (Chair)
Luz Irina Calderón Villalobos, Head, Genome Editing Research Group, KWS Group
Catalin Voiniciuc, Assoc. Professor, Horticultural Sciences Dept., Univ. Florida
Merritt Khaipho-Burch, Research Scientist, Corteva Agriscience
Overview
The US and the world urgently need workable, sustainable solutions to major agricultural and related environmental problems. These solutions must be found and rolled out in the next 30 years – but we are running out of time. We cannot spend 30 years simply doing more discovery research; discovery has to translate to real-world products and processes. Synthetic biology (SynBio) – the engineering of biology – is perfectly placed to discover solutions and to translate them, but only if deployed with (i) clear, realistic, stable aims; (ii) coordinated effort; and (iii) cooperation with agricultural scientists. SynBio thus has a huge opportunity for real-world impact. Many universities have genome-editing, plant breeding, and crop management research that can interface readily with SynBio, and systems in place to take ideas to products. But university SynBio faculty hires in plant science and adjacent areas tend to have creative but diffuse and reductionist visions rather than informed and actionable plans for SynBio in crop improvement or other sectors of agriculture and the environment. SynBio’s potential is therefore not being fully realized, in large part due to disconnects between the talented new cohort of synthetic biologists and the realities of agriculture and agribusiness. The proposed Workshop will help to fix these intellectual disconnects and to grow personal networks between scientists in SynBio and agriculture.
Workshop Schedule
Time |
Friday February 28 |
Saturday March 1 |
Sunday March 2 |
8:00-9:00 |
Breakfast |
Breakfast |
Breakfast |
9:00-9:45 |
Keynote: Crop improvement realities |
Field crop improvement |
ECR Idea pitches 1 |
9:45-10:30 |
Keynote: Crop/microbe realities |
Specialty crop improvement |
|
10:30-11:00 |
Break |
Break |
Break |
11:00-11:45 |
Genome editing |
Crop metabolic engineering |
ECR Idea pitches 2 |
11:45-12:30 |
Transformation & transgenes |
Microbial N fixation |
|
12:30-1:30 |
Lunch |
Lunch |
Lunch |
1:30-2:30 |
Panel: Engineering biology |
Panel: Business of biology |
|
2:30-3:15 |
Breakout groups |
NSF SynBio Panel |
|
3:15-3:45 |
Break |
Break |
|
3:45-4:30 |
Future directions posters |
Breakout groups |
|
4:30-6:00 |
Breakout group reports |
||
6:00-7:00 |
Mixer |
Mixer |
|
7:00-8:30 |
Dinner |
Dinner |
Key Contributors
Sessions |
Topics |
Contributors |
Keynotes |
Crop improvement realities |
Claudia Nari (Inari) |
Crop/microbe realities |
Karsten Temme (Pivot Bio) |
|
Panels |
Engineering biology |
Kristi Snell (Sustainable oils), A Hanson, C Voiniciuc |
The business of biology |
Mike Nuccio (Inari), Luz Irina Calderón Villalobos (KWS) |
|
SynBio at NSF |
Anthony Garza, Steven Peretti, Clifford Weil (NSF) |
|
Real-world applications |
Genome editing |
Tracey Chapman (Pairwise) |
Transformation & transgenes |
Veena Veena (Danforth) |
|
Field crop breeding |
Jessica Rutkoski (Univ. Illinois) |
|
Specialty crop breeding |
Vance Whitaker (Univ. Florida) |
|
Crop metabolic engineering |
Johnathan Napier (Rothamsted, UK) |
|
Microbial N fixation |
Jean-Michel Ané (Univ. Wisconsin-Madison) |
|
ECR idea pitches |
Plant-centric ideas |
8 ECRs |
ECR faculty posters |
Future directions for Ag SynBio |
~15 ECR faculty |
|
Breakout groups |
Where we are |
Rapporteur: Steven Burgess Univ. Illinois) |
Where we should be |
Rapporteur: R Clay Wright (Virginia Tech) |
|
How to get to a new ecosystem |
Rapporteur: Merritt Khaipho-Burch (Corteva) |
